Straight-line Path-following Control of an Underactuated Mobile Robot with Finite-time Convergence

In this paper, a finite-time bounded controller is proposed for the straight-line path-following system to steer an underactuated mobile robot (UMR) to move along the predetermined straight-line paths in the presence of systematical uncertainties and external disturbance. The construction of this controller consists of two steps. First of all, a local control law is constructed for the path-following system. The other step is to combine the local finite-time controller with the saturation function to construct a bounded finite-time controller, which ensure the path-following errors converge to origin. Simulation results are given to verify the validity and robustness of the proposed control algorithm.